That part of the bill requires teachers designated by a school district as "school protection officers" to carry firearms at all times on school property. *(Clarification, thanks to a reader: The bill does not mandate that schools or districts designate protection officers in the first place. It is voluntary. If teachers are protection officers, they must, however, carry their firearms on them at all times).

Rep. Stacey Newman, a Democrat who has vocally opposed the Republican gun agenda this session, tells Daily RFT that, by her count, the legislature put forward a whopping total of 23 pro-gun, "NRA bills" in addition to three proposed amendments to the constitution that would strengthen gun rights in some way. This is in the House and Senate combined, but does not include various pro-gun amendments tacked onto other bills not directly related to firearms.

Conversely, she says there were a total of three gun control bills introcued, including one of her own.

They went nowhere.

Here's a Missouri GOP press release sent out on Friday praising one of the successful gun bills.

Missouri Passes Legislation to Reform Concealed Carry Process

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - Following the admission of Governor Jay Nixon's office that his officials at the Department of Revenue had sent data on concealed carry holders to Obama officials in the federal government, the Missouri House and Senate passed SB 75. The bill gives each Sheriff in every county the duty to handle conceal and carry permits.

"This is an important change in the CCW process that Senator Dan Brown and I have worked on with the goal of preventing the state revenue department from ever again sharing the personal information of permit holders with the federal government," said State Representative Eric Burlison (R-Springfield). "This is a common sense change that empowers our sheriffs to not only issue a certificate of qualification for a permit, but to actually take sole responsibility for the process by issuing permits. It's a move that will give the people of Missouri confidence that the process will not violate their rights."

State Senator Kurt Schaefer (R - Columbia), who helped lead in this fight, stated, "SB 75 is an important piece of legislation that will streamline the conceal carry process, while removing unnecessary bureaucracy from the process by allowing Missouri's sheriff department to handle the permits. This process is ideal to ensuring each individual's privacy is protected."

Thanks to the leadership of the House and Senate, SB 75 strikes a good balance in both reforming and respecting the current protections that the current process helped ensure. This is why the $100 application fee will remain the same, and permits will be good for five years. To enhance current safeguards, SB 75 also adds an additional background check through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which is seen as the most comprehensive background check available. By using NICS, Missouri will continue to be a leader nationally in Mental Health Record Submission.

"SB 75 was a bill that was filed one day before the Sandy Hook tragedy because of my concern for what I believe to be an epidemic of active shooters in our schools. Unfortunately, we had to expand the scope of the bill to remove the issuing of concealed carry weapons permits from the Department of Revenue because of the lack of respect for the most basic privacy expectations Missourians deserve. My hope would be that this bill will encourage school districts to create active shooting training programs so that teachers will know how to save lives in the event of such a tragedy, prevent accidental gun deaths through education, and protect Missourians from having their personal information shared by the Department of Revenue," said State Senator Dan Brown (R-Rolla).

If signed into law by Governor Jay Nixon, the duty of issuing concealed carry permits will be transferred to each individual Sheriff department by December 31st. The Department of Revenue will begin the transition process on August 28th to ensure a seamless transition.

"With the governor's signature, this bill will make the process of obtaining a CCW permit far less burdensome and far more secure," said Burlison. "I thank my colleagues for giving such strong support to this change and Senator Brown for working with me throughout the session to move this change through the process and into law."

And here are the final copies of the three pro-gun proposals discussed in this article, now on the governor's desk.

Reading the comments, I applaud all of my conservative friends.. But this IS the RFT.. Not exactly the bastion of intelligent, logical thought. Its a mouthpiece for the borg (aka Liberals).. Keep up the good fight and let Sam here keep up his love affair with ole Rachel on MSNBC.. Good luck with that one Sam, unless your full name is Samantha.. Its going to be a very one-sided affair.

Reading the comments, I applaud all of my conservative friends.. But this IS the RFT.. Not exactly the bastion of intelligent, logical thought. Its a mouthpiece for the borg aka.. Liberals.. Keep up the good fight and let Sam here keep up his love affair with ole Rachel on MSNBC.. Good luck with that one Sam, unless your full name is Samantha.. Its going to be a very one-sided affair.

now its on a sherrifs level the person who just got out still would be denied because the sherrifs dept would review his record. The paper process is the loong part of sending the paper work away and waiting months to get approved. now the local sherrifs dept has the ability to review the records and approve or deny ppl

"and eliminate a major record-keeping component of the current process."

The author is ignoring that the true "major record-keeping component" of the current system is putting it into the law enforcement MULES system ... which we can presume has safeguards against abusive fishing expeditions. There's absolutely no reason the DoR needs to keep after the fact records of CCW endorsements except to abuse them.

"record keeping banned"....so when a rapist or murderer gets out, they can just go ahead and go buy a gun again with no records behind them to say "this guy shouldn't get a gun"? Please tell me I read that wrong...

TO TAKE AWAY OUR GUNS IS TO TAKE AWAY YOUR RIGHTS, IF WE ALLOW ONE THEY WILL ALL GO. PEOPLE WAKE UP WE LIVE IN ONE OF THE WORLDS MOST FREE SOCIOTIES. YES PEOPLE GUNS ARE USED TO KILL MILLIONS DAILY, BUT IF WERE GONNA BAN GUNS THEN LETS BAN CIGGARETTES,CARS, MOTORCYCLES, CIGARS, ALCAHOL, AND EVERY OTHER FREEDOM WE HAVE, MATER OF FACT WHY NOT JUST BECOME NORT KOREA,!!!!! AS YOU CRITISIZE LEGAL HONEST GUN OWNING CITIZENS INSTEAD OF SEEKING TO OBSERVE AND CORRECT MENTAL HEALH ISSUES IN THIS COUNTRY, YOU MAY WANT TO CHANGE YOUR OUTLOOK AND MOTIVES BEFORE YOU DISARM A NEIBHOR OR CITIZEN THAT WOULD PROTECT YOU IN A HEART BEAT WITH THAT SAME GUN IF YOUR LIFE WERE THREATENED OR YOU FAMILY WAS IN DANGER....

The only way this makes getting concealed carry permits easier is by skipping the step of having to go to the DMV. The DMV just took your paperwork and your picture and gave you an ID. It was a hassle for sure, but it's not like they were performing any checks at that point. They strictly played the role of giving you an ID, the local sheriffs department has always been the organization that performs the background checks and approves or denies applicants. The Dept of Revenue never performed that, they just issued you a picture ID with a CCW stamp on it.

That's an interesting scenario and would make a great scene in a TV show, but not one backed up by statistics in this country. CCW holders getting shot while trying to draw a gun to defend themselves is so rare as to be an anomaly.

if a bad guy robbing you on the street has the drop on you with his gun pointed at you with finger on trigger, and you beging to reach for your concealed weapon, i dont really see how your concealed-carry permission slip is going to help you considering 1nce you start to reach for your weapon bad guy is going to blast you. now you're just as robbed, plus you're dead, and the bad guy now has 2 guns instead of one.

There are no "gun permits" in this state. You either pass the NCIS check, or you don't. Permits are issued for concealed carry.
This article is laced with biased bullshit. At least educate yourself on the subject if you insist on writing about it.

It is ridiculous that these pieces of legislation were even necessary. Necessary not because the systems were broken but because someone (Dept. of Revenue) fucked up big time in sharing private information only necessary at the state level with the Feds. The federal government has NOTHING TO DO WITH STATE'S CCW PERMITTING PROCESSES WHATSOEVER. To share that information was an overextension of authority that did not exist and that those charged with keeping information private couldn't be trusted.

How many times do we have to say it? STOP DEMONIZING GUN OWNERS AND CCW HOLDERS AND TREATING US LIKE CRIMINALS. There are millions of us. We are decent people that would protect you as much as ourselves. We are not going away and we will protect our rights.

"Eliminating the department of revenue from this process, as we've noted, means that the permit application will be quicker, with the removal of a final step involving an endorsement at the state level."

Oh BS.

I have a CCW. Once I had my paperwork from the police, I walked 15 feet to the license Bureau and they printed me license with the endorsement on it in less than 5 minutes.

I don't know what you are getting at here anyway. Are you trying to say that tying up folks in unnecessary delays and government Bureaucracy because 'guns are spooky' is a good thing? Once you have the paperwork from the police - you are done anyway. The DMV is merely protocol today, there is no checks done there and they have no option but to print the endorsement, they are afforded no discretion under the law in that regard.

This is some lazy ass reporting sir. Next time take the time to understand the facts before you go off all half cocked.

@aaron.lorton No, all because the Feds, on a fishing expedition, asked the Highway Patrol for a list of *every* Missouri concealed carry licensee---although not so officially they were willing to put the request in writing, as is standard for obvious reasons---and the DoR without a asking any questions supplied it, all 160,000 names and identifying information. The Feds claim they never could read these lists, for what that's worth, but the president is obvious, especially with everyone in Nixon's administration claiming all this was legal.

It's not wise to argue with a legislature over what they thought they made illegal in very plain language. Oh, yeah, they also stonewalled and resisted admitting this every step of the way, and often lied about it, although I don't think any perjury was committed.

So this is in response to a real abuse that happened long before Sandy Hook, and the legislation makes sure it can never happen again by limiting the info to sheriffs' offices and MULES. Any claims this is an overreaction to background checks---which I'll remind you are very serious for Missouri concealed carry licenses, including sending your fingerprints to the FBI (none of that is changing)---is either based on ignorance of the above or a peculiar tolerance for government abuse.

This has nothing to do with simply buying guns; if they've committed a felony, the state has reported them to National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) which used by gun dealers to check for disqualified would be buyers.

As I mention elsewhere, CCW is reported to the MULES system, plus the local sheriff keeps track of the one in his county and revokes them temporarily or permanently as needed, which is also required by the current law.

@Courtni674 These people don't buy their guns in the regular way anyway. They get them on the street from other criminals....and it's the conceal carry permit that is at the option of the local Sheriff, not the purchase of the weapon.

@Donald L. Creswell People are smart enough to not go for their concealed weapons when "a bad guy robbing you on the street has the drop on" them. Fortunately that's a rare minority of cases, and generally starts with a failure of situational awareness. You don't have to read very many of these cases to find that citizen concealed carry works a whole lot of the time.

@Chad I got mine and then had to drive 6 miles to the DMV, wait in a 20 min line, then was told that I had to have a Birth Cert or Passport. When I came back, again waited in line 30 minutes or so, I was told in addition to the Cert, I ALSO had to have proof of residency. This is after the FBI and MHP had researched me. I was told this was effective the day I came in the first time but was not told. I think this is a good thing and would have saved me TWO TRIPS to DMV. Just sayin...

@bushwacker2010@Courtni674 Ahh. but as we have been seeing more and more, criminal and mental problems are NOT showing up in the standard background check because the system is seriously flawed. The Navy Yard shooter bought a shotgun legally two days before despite several "minor gun crimes" and severe mental problems he had displayed over the years.